Friday, August 28, 2015

2015-08-29 PALESTINE: Routines of the occupation... _____________________________________
On Monday, Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar faced a military hearing at
Ofer, an Israeli army base in the illegally-occupied West Bank. Jarrar's
only "crime" is speaking out against against the Israeli occupation of
Palestine and for the rights of Palestinian political prisoners. At the hearing Monday, the two witnesses brought by the prosecution (an army officer) before the judge (also an army
officer) said that false confessions had been extracted from them by
Israel under the duress of torture in Israeli detention. The prosecutor
then farcically had the witnesses designated by this kangaroo court as
"hostile" and was able to cross examine them. This was a brave move
by the witnesses, who were essentially forced to testify and will likely
now face ominous consequences when they head back to Israel's notorious
prisons system, which habitually tortures its victims. The Israeli
columnist Gideon Levy, who has been covering the case for Haaretz, says
that the case demonstrates again that the whole of Israel's military
court system (used almost exclusively for Palestinians, and not for
Jewish citizens) is a "ridiculous costume party ... a system where the
judge salutes the prosecutor, who outranks him militarily".

On
Monday, Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar faced a military hearing at Ofer,
an Israeli army base in the illegally-occupied West Bank. Jarrar's only
"crime" is speaking out against against the Israeli occupation of
Palestine and for the rights of Palesti

2015-08-28 Postcard from the End of America: Don Hensley in Huntingburg, Indiana ======================== Linh Dinh
I’ve prowled around Gary, relaxed in New Harmony and explored downtown
Indianapolis after midnight. There is a bronze statue of John Wooden.
Kneeling and suited, the basketball coach is surrounded by five young
pairs of male legs, their bodies disappearing above the pelvis. It is
very creepy and gay. One of these days, I must barge into the dismal
looking Whistle Stop, just across the street from Indianapolis’ Greyhound station. I need to see more of Indiana, that’s for sure....
The one friend I have in Indiana, I haven’t met in person. On July
31st, 2015, 62-year-old Don Hensley emailed to say he appreciated my
articles. Then, “Our family farm is gone and I’m the last from the old
homestead. Dad made me and my twin brother promise to find any other job
but farming. He used to joke that the only certain way he knew to
become a millionaire farming was to start out with $10M… You’ve made me
shed a tear more than once, but I’m left feeling that I’ve met people I
never would have. Home, a job, family and food on the table is really
all most of us hope for out of life.”

2015-08-28 Postcard from the End of America: Woodbury, NJ ======================== By Linh Dinh
Two much larger race riots happened in 1969 and 1971, and their
consequences can still be seen and felt today. The 1971 one was
triggered by the beating death of an unarmed Puerto Rican motorist by
two white cops, one an Army vet who had volunteered for Vietnam combat
after being assigned to South Korea. Nearly all the whites have fled Camden. Today, blacks and Hispanics make up 95%
of its population. Camden is surrounded by towns that are mostly white,
however, and the contrast between decaying Camden and charming
Collingswood, for example, borders on the bizarre.

2015-08-28 The Meaning of the US Saber-Rattling at the Borders of Russia ====================== By the Saker
Then, it is really dangerous to see the kind of completely
irresponsible statements regularly made by top US officials ranging from
Obama’s idiotic claim that Russia is somewhere between ISIS and the
Ebola virus in the list of major threats to the world or the more recent
declaration of a JCS Nominee General Joseph Dunford who seriously
declared that “Russia presents the
greatest threat to our national security”. This kind of reckless
fear-mongering can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and result in an
actual war, if only because of the confrontational atmosphere it
creates.... The US will probably only achieve a moderate degree of
success in its desperate campaign to present Russia as a threat to the
world. After all, there are only so many gullible doubleplusgoodthinkers
out there willing to buy this silly notion. The problem is that
regardless of the real feelings of most Europeans, the EU’s comprador
ruling class will continue to act as if the threat was real. The same
goes for the Empire’s propaganda machine (aka “corporate media”). The current saber-rattling is therefore likely to continue as long as the EU is run by US-puppets.

Europe
is in free fall. Nobody can doubt that any more. In fact, the EU is
simultaneously suffering from several severe problems and any one of
these could potentially become catastrophic. Let’s look at them one by
one. The 28 member EU...

2015-08-28 PALESTINE: Chomsky on apartheid... ==========================
“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than
apartheid,” Chomsky says, according to Days of Palestine. “To call it
apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South
African-style apartheid. “What is happening in the Occupied
Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South
African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce…
“The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want
them out, or at least in prison.” “When what is called Israeli jet
planes bomb defenceless targets in Gaza, that is US jet planes with
Israeli pilots,” he said. “And the same with the high-tech munition and
so on and so forth. So this is, again, sadism masked as compassion.
Those are the actions.”

American
military forces captured only three out of the 116 prisoners still
remaining at the Guantanamo Bay prison complex in Cuba, a new analysis
by the Guardian discovered. Many of those left were sold to the US for
monetary rewards.

2015-08-28 Cold War 2.0 - the Propaganda Wars - US media spread false news on 2,000 Russian casualties in E Ukraine
========================
The false news report started at Forbes, and from there spread to other US media...

2015-08-28 World under the Greater Depression ===========================
Contrary to various governments falsely claiming "recovery", the
Greater Depression, which started with the 2008 banking crisis in the
US, is here to stay. Like the Great Depression of the 20th century, its
core cause is vast corruption of the financial system with government
complicity. Until corruption of the financial system and corruption of governments are addressed, there is no chance of true recovery...

2015-08-28 YEMEN: A mini-war =============
he stark facts of yet another horrible and unjustified US backed war in
the Mid-east, where civilians are suffering starvation and worse. US
foreign policy can not get any more wrong-headed. H/T Dennis Marburger

2015-08-28 The myth of Russian "Threat" ==========================
The story is pretty clear: What bothers US/UK more than all is "losing
the information war", e.g, the phenomenal success of Russia Today. And
the response is the only response US/UK, a one trick pony know - naked
aggression. The truth is particularly clear, if one compares Russia and
China: China has both the capability and the capability and the
intention to depose the US. But China, which operates on a different time scale and is indifferent to the information war is not a threat at all... jz ___________________________Pepe Escobar writes:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey entered certified
Donald “known unknown” Rumsfeld territory when he recently tried to
conceptualize the “threat”; “Threats are the combination, or the
aggregate, of capabilities and intentions. Let me set aside for the
moment, intentions, because I don’t know what Russia intends.” So
Dempsey admits he does not know what he’s talking about. What he seems
to know is that Russia is a “threat” anyway — in space, cyber space,
ground-based cruise missiles, submarines. And most of all, a threat
to NATO; “One of the things that Russia does seem to do is either
discredit, or even more ominously, create the conditions for the failure
of NATO.” So Russia “does seem” to discredit an already self-discredited NATO. That’s not much of a “threat”.
All these rhetorical games take place while NATO “does seem” to get
ready for a direct confrontation with Russia. And make no mistake;
Moscow does view NATO’s belligerence as a real threat.

2015-08-28 Climate change =================
Aerial photograph of thousands of Pacific walrus coming ashore near
Point Lay, on the north-west Arctic coast of Alaska, on Sunday.
Photograph: Gary Braasch/Corbis ____ For anybody, who visited
anywhere close to the polar regions, climate change effects have been
blatant for years. The entire denial story is amazing... Enough money
can turn even the climate truth upside down... A sign of the times...
Enough money could apparently turn day into night... at least in
mainstream media...

2015-08-27 Cold War 2.0: CHINA gave US notice on T-bill liquidation... ============== Let the games begin..
As Bloomberg reports, "China has cut its holdings of U.S. Treasuries
this month to raise dollars needed to support the yuan in the wake of a
shock devaluation two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the
matter. Channels for such transactions include China selling directly,
as well as through agents in Belgium and Switzerland, said one of the
people, who declined to be identified as the information isn’t public.
China has communicated with U.S. authorities about the sales."

11-12-10 Where should Occupy go next? Civil Disobedience in the footsteps of Thoreau and Gandhi!http:// www.scribd.com/doc/75348301/12-06-08 Courts and Judges as racketeering enterprises under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) - key element in the current financial crisishttp://www.scribd.com/doc/96504009/Secede! The US in its current form is simply unmanageable...

What did the experts say?

* דוח סייג לזכויות האדם נכלל בדוח התקופתי של האו"ם לגבי זכויות האדם בישראל (2013), בלוויית ההערה: "חוסר יושרה בכתבים האלקטרוניים של בית המשפט העליון, בתי המשפט המחוזיים, ובתי הדין למוחזקי משמורת בישראל".* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2010 Periodic Review Report regarding Humnan Rights in the United States, with the note: "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California".* The Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations was incorporated into the 2013 Periodic Review Report regarding Humnan Rights in Israel, with the note: "lack of integrity of the electronic records of the Supreme Court, the district courts and the detainees courts in Israel."

The United States

* "...it's difficult to find a fraud of this size on the U.S. court system in U.S. history... where you have literally tens of thousands of fraudulent documents filed in tens of thousands of cases." Raymond Brescia, a visiting professor at Yale Law School

* Los Angeles County is"the epicenter of the epidemic of real estate and mortgage fraud."FBI (2004)

* “…judges tried and sentenced a staggering number of people for crimes they did not commit."Prof David Burcham, Loyola Law School, LA (2000)

* “This is conduct associated with the most repressive dictators and police states… and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted.”Prof Erwin Chemerinksy, Irvine Law School (2000)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/239647129/The HRA submission was incorporated into the 2015 HRC Professional Staff Report on the United States with the note: :“HRA NGO recommended restoring the integrity of the IT systems of the courts, under accountability to the Congress, with the goal of making such systems as transparent as possible to the public at large.”

[2] Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission for the 2013 UPR of the State of Israel was incorporated into the UN Human Rights Council Professional Staff Report with the note: "Lack of integrity in the electronic record systems of the Supreme Court, the district courts and the detainees' courts in Israel".

2012-06-04 Human Right Alert's Submission; 2013 UPR of the State of Israel: Integrity, or lack thereof, of the

[3] Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission for the 2010 UPR of the United States was incorporated into the UN Human Rights Council Professional Staff Report with the note: "Corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California."

2010-04-19 Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the

2010 Review (UPR) of Human Rights in the United States as incorporated into the UPR staff report:

[1] 10-10-01 United Nations Human Rights Council Records for 2010 Review (UPR) of Human Rights in the United States, where Human Rights Alert (NGO) submission was incorporated with a note referring to "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California."http://www.scribd.com/doc/38566837/http://www.scribd.com/doc/108663259/